N.U. Abdul Razzak Udayar
Sri Lanka that has been struggling to find the form since of late was comprehensively beaten by the high riding South Africa that broke several world records at the Arun Jaitley stadium in Delhi on Saturday 07.10.2023. The fourth fixture under the ongoing 2023 world cup drew the attention of millions of fans and spectators for South Africa showed their superiority and talent by getting 428 for 5 wickets. Three of their frontline batters made centuries giving a tough time to Sri Lanka. The hero of Saturday’s encounter was 29 year old Aiden Markam that hammered the fastest century surely making him to be the fastest centurion in the ODI world cup history. The experienced opener cum wicket keeper and the former captain of all three formats is one of the fastest run getters in the international cricket tourneys Quinton de Kock and their one down batsman right hand Rassie van der Dussen with 5 centuries under his pocket hammered Lankan bowlers to build a massive partnership of 204 runs for the 2nd wicket to set the platform to give an ignominious defeat to Sri Lanka.
Changing pillows cannot solve the basic problem of the performance of our national team. When Sri Lanka decided to bat first in the Asian Cup final a substantial number of fans and spectators made a criticism against the captain and the team for taking the rash decision of batting first. Yesterday, our captain Dasun Shanaka opted for batting thus letting the Protease to run riot creating many a world record. In one sense, he is right as Sri Lanka also went past 300 runs in the run chase. As usual Kusal Mendis and Charith Asalanka kept the Sri Lankan flag high for certain time scoring fighting 76 and 79 79 runs respectively. Skipper Dasun too made a contribution of 68 runs in the batsman friendly wicket. All-rounder Kasun Rajitha made his contribution by securing 33 runs in this losing battle to bring some respectability to Sri Lanka.
It is high time that Sri Lanka took best measures to select the effective bowlers to give a fight at the world’s biggest stadium, the Narendera Modi grounds that is the main venue for most of the matches for the 2023 world cup. Sri Lankan authorities should immediate prepare a powerful second squad to substitute our cricketers who get injured. Then player discipline should be monitored to the letter and more practice and unity of players and the rapport between the officials should be consolidated to get better results in all other matches. Failures are the pillars of success. Let us take the positives of yesterday’s humiliating defeat and win the next encounter that is against powerful Pakistan on 10th October 2023.
